This
is
not
just
a
Christmas
Campaign…This
is
equimedia’s
perfect
Christmas
campaign

This is not just a Christmas Campaign…This is equimedia’s perfect Christmas campaign ...

The main event…

You spend time picking out your turkey and lovingly preparing it… only to find out that it doesn’t fit into the oven and you have to chop the legs off. Or you set the oven to come on at 4am to start cooking it, but you had one too many on Christmas Eve and slept in and now it’s all dried out.

Your campaignable idea has to be the main event. Start with this, and then find the perfect mix of placements and channels to execute the idea, to maximise success across channels. The best campaigns are planned and run this way round. It is so hard to reverse engineer the audience and idea to fit the placements. This campaign idea and creative will sit proudly at the centre of your ‘Christmas Campaign Spread’ and be what drives your audience to complete a valuable action. You want them to remember it long after Christmas so they look forward to the next campaign or come back to you to purchase when the time is right.

And you want them to remember it for the right reasons, so remember to baste… you don’t want your campaign to dry up mid-way through and achieve mediocre results which Nan will talk about all year!

Get your timings right…

No one wants a sorry-looking burnt roast potato, or soggy sprout come the main event, so to ensure it all comes together piping hot and perfect – timing is key!

Review last year’s results… and identify key product launches / offers / competitor activity for this campaign period to try and anticipate how they might affect campaign performance. Consider all elements of your campaign – outdoor, TV, creative, messaging and leverage this for your online assets and planning to ensure that you get the maximum result from your campaign. (We would hope) you wouldn’t slap a side of chilli onto your Christmas dinner, so don’t try to shoe-horn something in that hasn’t been thought through. This could be an app… just for the sake of it, or a # campaign without any social bolstering of the campaign. If it doesn’t feel like it fits with the main campaign, don’t risk turning off your audience.

Pay attention to the extras…

Everyone loves a good gravy. It brings the entire dinner together if done right... when made lovingly from the meat juices and vegetable trivet with that splash of wine to deglaze the pan, it adds dimensions of flavour. Although tempting just to crack open a pot of ready-made, or instant… it’s well worth the preparation.

For us, this is a bit like the campaign tracking. It can be a headache for a client to implement… one more thing for the web team to have to think about at what can be a peak period for them. But ensuring accurate campaign tracking when the campaign goes live will tell you so much about the campaign once it has ended. This could mean the difference between measuring success and retaining budget for the next financial year, or not really being able to justify what the budget achieved and losing out to competitors for future campaigns.

Also these tags are then implemented for future campaigns… and everyone loves seconds of gravy and roast potatoes on Boxing Day, so it is definitely worth the effort!

Ensure your store cupboard is stocked…

What is any meal without seasoning? And in this case, the seasoning is the constant tweaking and tasting of your dishes. Ensuring the balance is just right. That sage leaf between the layers of your pigs in blankets… the squeeze of orange in your cranberry sauce.

Control, test and learn is at the heart of our planning at equimedia. We know v1 of the plan won’t always be the winner, and we’re always striving to improve performance that little bit more by (e.g.) testing new ad copy, reviewing the landing page. Our advent calendars are quickly emptying out as the days and weeks to the big day pass us by, but this shouldn’t mean we overlook optimising and testing. It’s about learning what is going to pack that big punch of flavour to take your campaign results from good to great… and evolving the campaigns to reach this ideal; learning and rolling out optimisations as quickly as possible to maximise campaign success.

So remember:

• Keep it fresh – Baste to avoid a dried out campaign• Plan – everything should come together like clockwork and complement each other• Put the effort in to preparation – some things are worth it – like campaign tracking…and gravy!• Optimise – achieve perfection… test and learn to maximise the combination of flavours!

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